Mistletone and 2SER presents

DUNGEN W/ SPECIAL GUESTS THE LAURELS

Event Details

Mistletone and 2ser present Swedish psych rock legends Dungen, touring Australia for the first time since 2006.

Driven by tribal percussion, washes of epic guitar and super heavy flute frequencies, Dungen are one of the best and most consistently inventive psych rock bands in the world. Masterminded by songwriter Gustav Ejstes, Dungen have routinely garnered comparisons to acts like Love, Pink Floyd, the Electric Prunes, and Os Mutantes, yet Ejstes has always emphasised a strong sense of songcraft. Their music has deep roots in history, but it blooms in the present. The name of Dungen's latest album Allas Sak translates loosely into English as "everyone's thing" or maybe "anyone's thing." This title for Dungen's latest collection of sophisticated psychedelic rock also explains how the band works, creatively and collaboratively. "I was told by a friend once that as a songwriter and as a musical artist, you have to understand that as soon as the music leaves your body, it is no longer strictly yours," explains Gustav. "The listener also owns it and filters it through their personality, their thoughts and feelings."

In other words, the music is everyone's thing. It belongs to the band and to whoever hears it, which means that everyone is empowered to decipher the Swedish-language lyrics for themselves, to locate their own stories in the magisterial instrumental jams, to make all of this mean whatever they need it to mean. For Dungen, this communion between artist and audience is a beautiful and necessary process that makes the music mean more, not less. It becomes, in a sense, infinite.

Fun Tame Impala fact: In 2007, a young Kevin Parker got in touch with Dungen and sent them through his latest recording, asking them to mix it. The band's response? "No, we don't have to mix it! Just put it out! It's amazing as it is!" Prescient...

"It's forever rare to stumble upon bands as consistently mind-blowing and aesthetically far-reaching as Dungen... it's like being struck by indescribable melodic lightning. It's damn-near impossible to believe that their humming tubes, crackling drums, smoky backdrop, and complexly interwoven melodies were birthed in a quick-fix iPod age. But perhaps even more impressive is that, despite the music's headiness and intricacy, its anachronistic results feel unusually effortless, earnest, and unpretentious: Dungen seem driven to this sound not for bloodless cred points, but out of a very sincere devotion to the music from a bygone era" - PITCHFORK 9.3 BEST NEW MUSIC